research

1. Research
Ethan Colman

2. Audience Research

3. Target Audience Profile
Age: 12-18 although it has been found that people in ages up still read young adult fictions regularly.
Gender: None. Main character is male however it has an important female character through which many female topics can be explored thus not
fully cutting that side of the reader demographic off.
Readers of Young Adult (YA) Fiction are usually young and discovering things. They often relate to or have a desire to understand more about
topics that are present in YA Fiction.
Young Adult Fiction themes usually consist of stories about discovering who you are, who you want to be. They encompass all that it is to be a
young person learning about the world still and trying to find your way through it and they do not shy away from the dark and serious parts of
that world which comes through heavily in the themes that they can be based around such as racism, killings, domestic abuse, bullying, self-
harm and suicide, rape, violence, prejudice etc.
They also often contain themes like fantasy, romance and drama. These can be in forms of implied interest and nothing really developing
between characters, dragons and knights or just emotional moments of high tension or increased interest.
The audiences aren't looking for books filled with solutions but an emotional tale about discovering a way to deal with it and not always a 100%
solution but like a "morale to the story".
• Gender: None (male I guess)
• Contains Young Adult Fiction themes like figuring out who you are, what you want, relationships and the future and how to shape yours. It
covers serious topics and troubling situations. These would appeal to those who might have experiences around these things or even if
they don’t but as they are in that discovering faze are pulled into the events as they somewhat experience their first real look at it.
• Also contains themes about sports (track) and competitive toxicity as well as a lot of the stereotypes, expectations that come from
coach’s/parents/teachers etc.
• Large theme about abuse, toxic influences, relationships and making tough decisions.

4. Market
Young Adult Fiction themes usually consist of stories about discovering who you are, who you want to be. They encompass
all that it is to be a young person learning about the world still and trying to find your way through it and they do not shy
away from the dark and serious parts of that world which comes through heavily in the themes that they can be based
around such as racism, killings, domestic abuse, bullying, self harm and suicide, rape, violence, prejudice etc.
• YA, the smallest super-category with 8 million units sold, was up 60 percent in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020, selling 3 million more units. Ninety percent of gains
were from young adult fiction
• On average there are over 30,000 YA books published every year. 55% of YA books are purchased by adults
• Manga are a staple of Japanese popular culture, constituting a large market worth almost 613 billion Japanese yen in 2020
• Sales of general/trade manga titles have also been consistently trending up year after year, with an increase in sales of 106% from 2016 to 2020
Popular manga genres
1. Shonen - Dragon Ball
2. Shoujo - Sailor Moon
3. Slice of Life - Clannad
4. Sci-Fi - Cowboy Bebop
5. Adventure - One Piece
6. Horror - Elfen Lied
7. Psychological - Death Note
8. Sports - Haikyuu!!
• Young Adult Fiction genres - Coming of age in a distinct time and/or culture (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill A Mockingbird); drugs and gangs (Go
Ask Alice, Rumblefish, The Outsiders), vampires and paranormal (the Twilight series), dystopian (the Hunger Games and Divergent series), contemporary (The
Fault in Our Stars, Eleanor & Park).
• Comic book genres - Aside from superhero, the main genres of comic books are alternative/esoteric, manga, science fiction, fantasy, comedy,
action/adventure, horror, humour, romance, children, and adult. Superhero comics are most popular in the United States.

5. Production - Writing
This is a list of tips I found written on a blog by someone who wrote young adult fiction for work.
1. POV
Get the POV right. I don’t just mean first person or second person, but from what point in time is your narrator speaking? In writing for young adults, do not
write as an adult looking back. The perspective needs to be immediate. A teenage character can look back on his younger years, but he cannot have an adult’s
wisdom gained from hindsight. This is harder than it seems. It requires truly putting yourself in the teenage mind and often not caring much at all about the
grown-up world.
2. Age
Make sure your character’s age suits your audience. The age of the protagonist in YA novels will likely be the age of your intended reader. Kids will read up but
not down; they will pick up a book about a kid a few years older than they are but not the other way around. Therefore, middle-grade novels tend to deal with
middle-school-age characters and young-adult novels deal with high school-age characters. However, most high-school students read adult books, so the real
audience for YAs is seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. The important thing, again, is not to have an adult perspective, not to “look back” and reflect on the
emotion or the situation. Your character needs to learn, grow and change during the course of the novel from the events she is experiencing in the book. (This
is how YA novels differ from novels for adults that feature an adolescent protagonist.)
3. Touchy Subjects
Don’t shy away from touchy subjects. Pretty much any issue goes these days in terms of what is appropriate for young-adult fiction. As a general rule, middle-
grade fiction will not actively involve sex or drugs. For young-adult novels, there are no bounds in terms of topic; you can write about sexuality, homosexuality,
abuse, drunk driving, incest or rape. But it is not about finding an issue and then creating a story around it. It is about finding the right voice, finding the right
character, and telling his story.
4. Preachiness
Don’t get preachy. “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” This quote, often attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, says it all. Nobody wants to be taught
lessons when they are reading fiction. Never is this truer than in writing for young adults. Writers do not need to answer questions, only raise them. Certainly
your views and opinions will peek through your narrative, but do not enter this special contract between reader and writer with the intention of changing
someone’s mind or preaching. Teenagers have radar for this, and the voice will feel inauthentic because—well, it will be.
5. Hopeful Endings
Write hopeful endings. For the most part, young-adult novelists leave their readers with hope, if only a glimmer, despite whatever grim action came before.
Adult novels, while dealing with the same issues, can leave a reader utterly sad, even completely bereft. But in writing for young adults there still seems to be a
sense of responsibility—not to drill in lessons and give warnings, but to allow for possibility. Let your readers believe that in the end the power, the choice, is
theirs.

6. Production – digital art
There are two main methods of creating comics digitally: drawing sketches by hand and then scanning for line art and
colouring or doing every step digitally. Some artists will also do line art by hand and then scan right before colouring, but
many prefer the crisp, clean line art that digital methods allow
Sketch – A simplistic and often messy version of the art that is created to get a feel for the layout of scene, characters, props
and general look.
Line art – A much cleaner, fine lined edge given to all objects usually done over a sketch so you can see it in the background
to go over. Its lines are usually uniform length and long clean strokes instead of many small ones joining into each other.
Proportion sketch – a type of sketch usually done in a different colour at the very start for you to make slightly transparent
that has guidelines and methods for you to map out where certain body parts would go like the features on a face.
Layers – Layers can be used to very cleanly separate things like different parts of an artwork (a character's hair, a set of facial
features etc) which can help you to be able to erase and work on parts of an art piece without interfering with other parts
that could even overlap but stay perfectly safe. And to make colours work on layers so that you don’t have to paint exactly
within borders you can just make it behind another layer so that when it overlaps it will just disappear behind other parts of
the scene.
All of these things can be used in certain orders to make artwork a lot better and easier to create. E.g. making a proportions
sketch and then a normal sketch and then line art before adding colour. Which can really help to structure your art and help
you along with proportions, positions and come out with a clean result while getting to make a rough version to get
everything lined up before working meticulously on that piece.
Some software's may even come with other helpful features that can be researched and employed.

7. Production - Audio
• For Audio production you need very few things, but they need to be of good quality, or it will turn out terribly. These
things are microphones, noiseless studio spaces, sound proofing e.g. Foam on walls. These are essential to get good full
tonal range audio with no distracting/unintended background audio.
• The foam padding helps to stop reverb and can help to muffle sounds from getting out/into the room.
• Good microphone quality will help to crisply capture the sound you want at all volumes, even if they are whispering or
shouting, and capture higher and lower tones so you can get a more authentic sounding human voice/other
sounds which leads to a lot nicer sounding audio.
• Making sure you have a noiseless studio is also important because as little as a buzzing piece of electronics can be
picked up by a good microphone and ruin all the audio you take in that space and destroy the atmosphere of all the
work that is using audio from that space.

8. Topic
• Coming of age in a distinct time and/or culture (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill A Mockingbird); drugs and gangs (Go Ask Alice, Rumblefish, The
Outsiders), vampires and paranormal (the Twilight series), dystopian (the Hunger Games and Divergent series), contemporary (The Fault in Our
Stars, Eleanor & Park).
Topics I’ve found in YA fiction (
• Racism (Dear Martin)
• Abuse
• Oppression (Dear Martin
• Mental Illness
• Self worth
• Courage
• Bullying
• Harassment
• Rape (Dear Martin)
• Abuse of power (Dear Martin)
• Figuring out your future
• Being powerless
• Trauma
• Friendship
• Relationships/First love
• Identity/Self Discovery
Dear Martin explores Racism through the topic
Fiction/Drama/Sports/Teen/Family and Relationships
The main topic will be about an abuse victim who has closed off their own mind towards their future because of the trauma and will
lead around their friends supporting, encouraging and leading them through help to discover what they want, how to get it and how
to be happy and work through emotions that are often overwhelming and too much for someone to deal with while the other cast
also discover how to deal with their own problems and lean on one another around them until they all discover how to improve their
own lives and see what they want and why not to sit around and let things pass them by, or take the path of least resistance.

9. Audience Research
• Young adult (YA) fiction – “YA books are those aimed at kids aged 12 to 18 years. In most (if not all cases), the protagonists of the novels fall within those
age ranges, and the story is told through teenage eyes. Twelve to 18 is a big spread in age, from both reading and personal developmental levels. There's also a
big spread in subject matter. YA books are known to span all manner of worlds and topics — contemporary, dystopian, romance, paranormal, drugs, sex,
gender issues, parental divorce, terminal cancer, bullying. Most topics are fair game, so long as it's somewhat relevant to teenagers.”
• Manga book - 27.4% of readers are 25 years old or older, 25.8% are 19-24 years old, 17.6% are 16-18 years old, 16.4% are 13-15 years old,
9.6% are 10-12 years old, and 3.2% are nine years old or younger.
• Males and females exhibit some reading preferences that are differentiated by gender. There is also evidence of gendered readings of male
and female characters in manga. Manga in Japan are published for targeted gender and age groups.
• Comic book - The most common age was 14 years; the age with an equal number above and below it was 17, and the arithmetical average
age was 19.3. Of the almost 6,000 votes that were received, the majority were from teenagers.
• The emotional stakes make the books appealing to a wide swath of readers of all ages. By some market estimates, nearly 70 percent of all
YA titles are purchased by adults between the ages of 18 and 64.
Year Male Female
2016 56.23% 43.77%
2017 57.02% 42.98%
2018 60.41% 39.59%
2019 56.52% 43.48%

10. Market Research
Existing Products

11. Existing Product
It's a very different
kind of story; a White
girl attempts suicide
after being raped
and exploited by a
White male teacher
at her high school;
when Lily meets Dari,
an artistic Black boy
with an abusive
father and absent
mother, her outlook
on life changes and
she invites him to
move in with her and
her mother.
Blurb
Clearly doesn’t
avoid dark
subjects,
touching on
several at once.
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
tells the story of Justyce
McAllister, a strong
minded seventeen-year-
old black man who lives a
challenging life, both in
his poor neighbourhood,
constantly threatened by
local criminals, and at the
overwhelmingly white
prep school he attends.

12. Existing Product
Given does not shy
away from
addressing some
strong themes and
emotions. The main
plot covers the MC
trying to process
their emotions since
their childhood/first
love took their own
life.
The average age for
the characters of given
is apparently sixteen

13. Existing Product
Giant Days is a
comedic comic book
written by John
Allison, with art by
Max Sarin and Lissa
Treiman. The series
follows three young
women – Esther de
Groot, Susan Ptolemy
and Daisy Wooton –
who share a hall of
residence at university.
It says that Giant Days is
for ages 12+ but I
cannot find anything on
the ages of the
characters within the
series
Esther de Groot, Susan Ptolemy, Daisy
Wooten, Graham McGraw, Ed
Gemmell. These are the main cast of
characters who are in university
which would most likely put them
between 18 and 24.

14. Existing Product
BRAVE is a light-
hearted, humorous
comic series on
that celebrates the daily
acts of courage taken to
carry-on following the
daily trials and
tribulations of life. The
hand-drawn and
coloured illustrations
that accept
inconsistencies parallel
the human experience
which is disjointed and
imperfect.
The characters in
Brave are supposed
to be in American
Middle School which
would put them
around the age of
eleven.
Brave takes a very relatable topic
to its viewer base and attempts
to make an uplifting story about
it attempting to give something
to those who struggle with those
everyday things

15. Research Analysis
• What common features do the researched products have?
• The characters are all similar ages, they all touch on some serious topics and highly
emotional and serious subjects such as abuse, racism, prejudice, oppression, rape, violence,
• They all feature cartoon esc artwork whether on the covers or throughout the whole work.
• What aspects of the research will you include within your own work?
• Character age shall be within 12-18
• Tough topics will be touched on (abuse, passion, deciding what you want to do, struggling
with motivation)
• The narrative will be emotive and lead by a clear thread of feelings
• Manga style
• Quiet studio spaces
• Good microphone

16. Bibliography

17. Bibliography
1. Young Adult Book Market Facts and Figures (thebalancecareers.com)
2. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+remove+background+audio+with+audacity&docid=6080506064691790
80&mid=FF5EEFB97D47EEB5FF46FF5EEFB97D47EEB5FF46&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

18. Art work
• For the art work of my piece I will need to do some research on aspects such as software,
technique etc.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4MLq2hRsFw this was a good short tutorial on a piece
of software focusing on how to use it rather than techniques.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2hm544loqc this tutorial was far more in depth, it
talked a lot about software and technique and covered almost everything it touched on
incredibly well
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOCU2LAFpv4 covers trying to mimic different styles
and the techniques used to achieve them which seems very helpful for thinking about what
style I might want to use and how I might achieve that
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q0E11tRzvc a really helpful coverage of a specific
piece of software and the assets it presents and how they can be used to make work
easier/better
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4VvCBtDWBw